T

he humanitarian crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine state was at the top of a list of regional priorities as the foreign ministers of the 10 ASEAN nations convened for closed-door talks in Thailand.

Thailand’s top diplomat said ASEAN had renewed its commitment on Friday to provide “collective assistance” to those affected by the crisis, in which hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have crossed into neighboring Bangladesh to flee from violence and persecution at home.

Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai, who hosts the bloc’s first major outing this year as chairman of ASEAN, said after the meeting that the organization would be compiling all the contributions that member countries had pledged to bring an end to the crisis.

As previously agreed upon by member states, ASEAN members would collectively funnel their contributions through the ASEAN Coordinating Center for Humanitarian Assistance (AHA Center) on disaster management, but the minister said separate pledges had also been made.

“Each of the ASEAN countries has its own bilateral efforts in that region, like Thailand — we have a number of different projects in Rakhine state,” he told reporters in a post-meeting conference in Chiang Mai.

More than 700,000 Rohingya from Rakhine fled into neighboring countries, mainly to Bangladesh, following a military crackdown that began in 2017 and sparked wide international concern.

A United Nations report in August last year detailed mass killings and gang rapes with genocidal intent and called for the military’s commander-in-chief and five generals to be prosecuted under international law.

ASEAN has been collectively criticized for its lack of response to the human rights violations happening in its backyard, but Pramudwinai argued that member countries had been actively contributing to resolving the crisis. Thailand, for instance, has initiated a number of programs in the troubled state, including mobile medical services, agricultural cooperation and the establishment of a Rakhine development center.

Thailand also runs a tripartite cooperation initiative with Japan and Myanmar on aquaculture training to improve the livelihood of local communities in Rakhine. Other countries like Malaysia and Indonesia have also made their own bilateral contributions, he said.

Most recently, Indonesia is building a hospital in Muaung Bwe, which is set to be operational in March this year.

Pramudwinai said ASEAN Secretary-General Lim Jock Hoi would serve as the bloc’s contact person to external parties looking to contribute to collective efforts, which include the UN High Commission for Refugees and the UN Development Program.

Meanwhile, the AHA Center and a needs assessment team would be deployed in the field to prepare “the groundwork for future activities involving perhaps the repatriation or even the rehabilitation of the returnees”, he said. However, their deployment would be postponed to an unspecified “later date”.

The needs assessment mission was formed following Lim’s visit to Myanmar in December.

Besides the crisis in Myanmar, ASEAN foreign ministers also discussed plans for the next reading of a draft code of conduct (COC) for the South China Sea and ways to get ASEAN involved in mediating Korean Peninsula tensions.

Pramudwinai said the next reading of the COC draft was scheduled for Feb. 26 and 27 in Myanmar.

ASEAN and China are trying to conclude negotiations on the codex by 2021.

On the development of a shared Indo-Pacific concept, Pramudwinai said not much was discussed apart from delegating the deliberations to the senior official-level and possibly expanding on the group’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation.

“I hope next time round, there would more comprehensive discussion on Indo-Pacific, if there’s a need, if not, then we would see how the idea would revolve,” he said.

“One should take into consideration the principles that appear in the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation […] Perhaps it could be expanded further to cover a wider area [like the Indo-Pacific region].”

Indonesia’s leading ASEAN diplomat said more input was needed to complete a collective ASEAN draft of the Indo-Pacific outlook, while Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi tweeted her appreciation for the contributions that member states had made in developing the concept.

The Indo-Pacific is an evolving concept for a regional order straddling the Indian and Pacific oceans, interpretations of which vary depending on the interests of countries in the region.